General Help and Questions

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Hi Claudia,

Yes, we're aware of the HomeAwayConnect disconnect happening at the end of the year. We're planning to integrate with VRBO/HomeAway a separate way so that your calendar will still remain updated as always.

-Michelle

BTW, it does work now. I meant to come back and let you know.

However, HomeAway is now getting rid of HomeAway Connect in December. Are you aware of this? I believe we now have to find a new calendar system for HomeAway. Can we enter your URL without giving the personal information to the guests, when they look at the calendar?

I know you were thinking about doing this, at one time, for the third party information, but I am not sure if it in effect now.

Thanks,
Claudia

I think it is working now, since I don't remember entering a manual reservation for a booking on VRBO.

Thanks,
Claudia

Hi Lee/Maggie,

Because of our agreement with Cornerstone - the company that underwrites our applications - and the volume of business we send to them, there is NO CANCELLATION fees on any of our merchant accounts. That's for both Sage and SecureNet. You can cancel at any time (even 5 days after setup) and you won't be charged.

Hope this helps,

-Michelle

Hi Michelle,

I have not changed the information you recommended yet. I haven't had time, so I can't answer it yet.

Claudia

Do you happen to know anything about their policies as far as cancellation of an account with Securenet? I have had problems in the past with merchant providers who required guaranteed long contracts with draconian cancellation fees.

Claudia, are you still seeing any problems? Over the past week, we've been working through different scenarios to make sure that everyones' calendars are updating right. All our testing is positive at this point, and we haven't heard of anything in awhile. I wanted to circle back to you since you opened a thread here and see if your calendars are okay?

-Michelle

Hi Claudia,

We sync with HomeAwayConnect (https://www.homeawayconnect.com) which is supposed to work with any VRBO or HomeAway property, regardless of where/what you have bundled.

That being said, maybe your HAC account got out of sync with the bundle thing they did?

Can you contact HAC and see if it's still configured correctly for your VRBO/HA listings?

If you login to HAC, it should show you your listings there too.

-Michelle

The more I think about it, if it has to do with the bundling (done on 9/13 for me), I think they told me that any updates will come from my VRBO site. Thus, if I had the VRBO calendar as the SYNC, then maybe it would update. Can I use the VRBO site as the sync calendar?

Claudia

Interesting. Maybe you can check if it may have something to do with Bundling. The only thing that may have changed was that I bundled HomeAway and VRBO.

Also, VRBO is my main website, not HomeAway. So, maybe it needs to be updated with the VRBO link and not the HomeAway. I will wait to hear from you before I test that theory.

I don't know if that is when it started. I can't remember. I just know that it isn't updating now. It could have been when it was bundled. :)

Claudia

Hi Claudia, thanks for letting us know. We're looking into it. We have seen some intermittent issues over the past few weeks that other users have reported. It's been hard to pin down since some HAC updates are working as normal.

-Michelle

I am not sure if it is only me, but I do not see my calendar being updated on the VRBO and HomeAway calendar.

Thanks,
Claudia

Hi Devin,

Thank you. Yes, I believe this is what I am looking for. However, it seems so complicated to set everything up. I can't seem to get my mind around all the different fields that have to be done for the template.

I will have to do this when I have time, which doesn't seem to be anytime soon. I will continue to do it the old way and send my emails via regular email, instead of OwnerRez.

Thanks,
Claudia

Or maybe you meant this:

https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/custom-fields-for-email-templates

Hi Claudia,

Did you mean two separate templates for sending emails? If so we have a blog post:

https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/scheduled-sending-for-emails

Let me know if this is what you meant.

Thanks,

Devin

Hi,

I just noticed this. Is this something that we got a notice about and I missed? Maybe I missed something else, but is there a way to separate different rentals? I have two rentals. One in Pennsylvania and one in South Carolina? How can I set up the two separate templates, for each rental?

thanks,
Claudia

Hi Glenn,

You're right about the renter agreement editor. We'll be changing it to match the same editor (and set of fields) that the email templates use. The old editor and fields that are there now are based on a design from several years ago and it was never updated. We'll also be adding support for custom fields. It will basically be a carbon copy of what you see with email templates. You are right that there is a problem with the HTML button. That stopped working one or two releases ago because of some updates.

-Michelle

I have recently been big on updating my emails with direct HTML to make them look a lot better. With an HTML editor like "KOMODO for the Mac", I can easily take an email template, click the HTML button, copy the HTML code, edit it nicely in the offline editor and then copy all and paste it back into the HTML section for the email template. Works really nice and I have cleaner looking emails going out.

However I can't seem to do this with the rental agreement (which is big and kinda messy from a formatting perspective for me). When I click the HTML button when in edit mode, either nothing happens on some computers, or I do get a popup window with nothing in it. Is there a trick to seeing and editing the HTML code for rental agreements? It seems the same on the surface as the email templates.

Glenn

Hi Jody,

Can you forward a copy of the original inquiry email to us at support@ownerreservations.com?

I have not heard of anyone else having problems, so it might be based on the one email in particular.

Also, I wanted to point out something else in case you didn't realize it. If you format the email a certain way, our system will automatically find and pull out the inquiry information so that you don't have to do the "unrecognized email" on every one. Read this for more information:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/inquiry-parsing-for-custom-emails

-Michelle

I get inquiries from my website as unrecognized and then manually enter in the data to create the inquiry. When I fill out the form as I have done a 100 times and push "save", it does nothing. Is there something wrong with the system?

Thanks

Jody

Hi Marinas Edge,

When entering manual bookings from other booking services (such as Airbnb), I would recommend putting in charges that match what the guest paid, not the total Airbnb charged. You always want your booking charges in OwnerRez to reflect real revenue so that your reports are accurate.

Then, in terms of the fees Airbnb charges, I would enter that in your accounting system. So if you import your OwnerRez booking charges into QuickBooks, for instance, you'd add a negative $50 (or whatever the Airbnb fee was) as well so that the bank records match up.

Any recommendations for handling AirBnB? Currently it is 100% manual and I can't get the balances to match since Airbnb collects a surcharge...

That sounds great! When you say the final confirmation page, which page is that? Is that where they agree to pay, whether it is check or credit card?

When do you think that will be going in?

Claudia

Hi Claudia,

Something we're thinking about doing, which will help alleviate this worry, is a feature called Legal Callouts.

Basically, when the guest gets to the Renter Agreement page, in addition to the normal thing they'll also see a list of checkboxes that they have to select in order to move forward with the acceptance process. The list of checkboxes will be customizable by you (the owner). So you'll be able to have a list of checkboxes like:

- I realize that the cancelation policy is...[x]
- I realize that pets are not allowed
- I realize that this property is on the river which may be dangerous

...and so on

Those same Legal Callouts will also be listed on the final confirmation page. This is a way to "call out" certain important aspects that the guest should be VERY aware of.

Do you think that would solve the problem?

-Michelle

Here is a second part to why I ask for this. This just came from the person having problems in this regard, with VISA...

"It is with great sadness that we have now lost $771.75, plus countless hours of frustration and time. The cardholder is being refunded in full, and we are not going to risk the $1000 Processing Fee by proceeding with arbitration.

I spoke to the cardholders bank directly, and the supervisor who reviewed the case. Even if I had sent the 2nd page of the contract, they still would have ruled in favour of the guest. In other words, it doesn't matter what your contract says. Yes -- your contract can stand up in a court of law, but not with VISA (and I assume MC has a similar policy).

If you take online bookings, your Cancellation Policy MUST be on the same page as the 'Click to Accept' button. It's not good enough to include a link to another page."

Thanks,
Claudia

Recently, a big problem arouse in a court case between a vacation rental owner and their guest. It made me think of possibly having a security for us owners. Is there any way that on the page that they click to reserve the booking our Cancellation Policy is displayed. Hence, there is NO WAY that they did not see the Cancellation Policy, before booking? Can you just have a field that we can enter our Cancellation Policy (brought over from our Rental AGreement or somewhere we can just enter it for this purpose and display everytime this page comes up) and show that this is the Policy. No excuses that it was not seen since it was with all the other items in the Rental Agreement.

You know what I mean? Maybe have it display or not display, depending on the owner and if they want this displayed on the screen. This, I believe, will hold up in court, that the Cancellation Policy was RIGHT THERE when they reserved.

Would this be an easy fix?

Claudia

Sounds cool! Can't wait.

Hi Marinas Edge,

Lots coming. We're down in the guts right now finishing some changes to how guest name/email/phone stuff is stored so that we can move to some CRM features in the near future.

We're also debuting our first pass at reporting in the release, and there are several bug fixes.

Bunch of minor stuff in how stuff is displayed on calendar/ribbon view. More on that soon too.

We're also working on something called OwnerRez Free and OwnerRez Premium that I'm not at liberty to discuss at the moment. ;-)

-Michelle

Your last few releases spoiled me..I'm anxiously awaiting your next release. What can we expect from it and approximately when will we see it ??

Hi Ed & Alyce,

I assume you're referring to our Features page that mentions that. That's a feature that we've been working on for awhile but has never been released. So unfortunately you can't do that just yet.

-Michelle